The Services That Booking Website Offers - Essay Example

? Traveling to other countries has been part of the lifestyle of most. Traveling has evolved from a luxurious and expensive hobby to a wanted and common activity today, whether it is meant for work or mere vacation. In relation to this, for those wanting to travel and for those who plan to stay for many days in the place they want to travel to, there are many necessary things to do before you can travel. First, you need to decide when you will travel, book the ticket on the airplane or ship, have an itinerary for each day and many more. Most of the time, we have a big problem of where we are going to stay in that country. It is really hard to look for hotels in the country where we are going especially if it is our first time to go there, and if we have to budget certain money that we have. Luckily, because of modern technology and the advent of the internet, there are many websites right now that offer services for booking hotels in most tourist destinations in the world. One of the websites which offers this kind of service is Booking.com. Booking.com is a website which offers hotel accommodation to most tourist destinations around the world like Paris, Las Vegas, Singapore, and Rome; and to over 99 countries. It is actually a part of Priceline.com which is the leading online reservations agency worldwide. It is established in 1996 and it guarantees the best prices for any type of accommodation, ranging from small independent hotels to 5 star hotels. The website is available in 41 languages and has over 12000 hotels option in 99 countries. The name of the site is very suitable to the services that it offers. It is very easy to find the website because when you type “booking hotels” in search engines, this site appears first in the list. Booking.com is not just any kind of booking website. It is actually registered with the trade register of the Chamber of Commerce in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This website helps the travelers choose the hotel accommodation they want based on their choice. Whether they want to have the cheapest hotel in their destination, or the hotel with the best quality and services; they will be presented with options in this website. This website offers an informative, user-friendly website which assures the best outcomes possible. You are almost given all the information you need in relation to booking hotels in other countries. It provides very convenient use to the travelers. The traveler does not have to worry about the hotel accommodation whenever he or she arrived in the destination or bother to have international calls to the hotels in their destination. Today, there is a continuous market leading growth of Booking.com. Many companies collaborate to support this website and it currently employs over 1800 professionals to guarantee the highest quality of online service and support. I am very glad that this website has no reservation fees. This is a very good marketing strategy and would attract more people to visit the site and avail of the services it offers. The reservation service including the booking fees, administration fees and cancellation fees is free of charge. This is very advantageous and customer-friendly because most of us want to save money as much as possible. The fiscal crisis that most of the countries in the world is experiencing right now must not be a hindrance for us to travel. This site helps the travelers have choices for hotel accommodation without the additional service fee. The services that Booking.com offers also assure the security of the customers. There is a guaranteed confidentiality regarding credit card number, personal information and email addresses. This will gain the trust of customers and will have a higher tendency to avail of the services that it offers. Also, this will gain more loyal customers, increasing the market investments. There is also an option to create a profile for faster booking services. You will also be updated with the promos and discounts in some hotels in most countries. This is a good marketing strategy because it will help not only the customers who look for hotels but also the hotels in collaboration with them which look for customers to accommodate. The website itself has a very simple template. Also the main emblem color of the site is blue, which is a good color choice for the website because it represents neutrality and formality. This makes the website reliable and showed form of authenticity. If you are going to book a hotel in the internet, you would want to book in a website which looks reliable because you are going to pay money to that site. You don’t want to be involved in a scam or any other form of fraudulent business. It uses simple and big texts which contrast the background color of the website. This is very important since you want the website to be easily read and catch attention. However, I’ve also observed that the website is quite crowdy. It is not a good characteristic because it makes the customer confused with some materials in the text. It would be advised to make listings rather than thumbnails. It also has good organization of content. You will not be lost in the website. There are specific services in specific portions in the websites. Also, you can change the currency of the hotel prices based on your preference. This would give the customer a better gauge of the hotel price so that it would be easier to decide which hotel accommodation to choose. However, it would be better if they add more currencies. This is again a good marketing strategy for it provides convenience to the customers. Personally, I am frustrated if the currency is given in dollars. I would be required to do all the computations and convert the price given. Moreover, this method, wherein the customer is the one to convert the price, is prone to errors and miscalculation. I am also amused that you can actually change the language in this website based on your choice or what is more understandable to you. This is a positive thing for the website since not all people that travel can understand the English language. Also, some people prefer having this kind of feature in any website because it makes them understand better the whole process of booking. It will be clearer to them the instructions in the features and services. . However, it would be better if they add more languages options. This will make room for more customers visiting the site and makes it a help to the marketing strategy of the website As a whole, I can say that the site has a very good marketing strategy. The website is very customer and user-friendly. The site is very organized and the template and design is very appropriate. The site helps the companies which invest in it have a higher level of trust and hence its progress will go on further. There are just some things that might be done to further improve the website. It would be better if they would also collaborate with transportation sector in each country so that the customers wouldn’t have to worry for this. Also, the company in the site should expand their company by putting offices to more countries as well, so that it would be easier for them to have connection in these countries; hence increase their influence and market. References: http://www.booking.com Read More